3 Month LSAT Study Schedule
If you have 3 months to prepare for the LSAT, you’re going to have to study smart, not just hard.
Most students should account to spend between 100-200 hours preparing for the LSAT. However, if your LSAT score from diagnostic tests is considerably lower than you’d like, you may need to spend more time prepping.
With a 3-month study window, that works out to around 30-70 hours of study time per month.
If you’re reading this guide with fewer than 3 months to prepare it’s going to be unreasonable to expect to go from a low score (below 145) and end up with a 160+. I might be worth while to have someone guide you through the process by investing in an reputable LSAT prep course.
Here is the exact LSAT self-study schedule we’d recommend based on the impressive results of previous test-takers, starting off with the materials you’ll require.
The LSAT Materials You'll Need:
Even if you do it yourself, studying for the LSAT will still set you back some money. If you’re on a budget, there are options to prepare without spending thousands of dollars. You’ll need two types of materials:
1) You'll need to buy many LSAT practice tests to practice on.
Ideally, you’d want to get every LSAT that’s been released. One option we recommend is to buy a subscription from LSAC, which will give you access to 60 different LSAT tests. You might not have the time to go through all of them, but using just a fraction of them will get you prepared more efficiently. That being said, before you can begin taking practice tests, you must have a firm grasp of LSAT question types and your LSAT skills.
2) You'll need materials that will help you learn the LSAT's question types and how to approach them.
The most costly component of LSAT preparation is the study guides. You may take a full LSAT course or choose to get cheaper LSAT books to get through this part of your studying more quickly. Here are some books and courses we’d recommend:
For Logic Games: The Logic Games Bible
- For Logical Reasoning: The Logical Reasoning Bible
- For Reading Comprehension: The Manhattan Prep Guide
- LSAT Prep by Magoosh
- LSAT Prep by Alpha Score
- LSAT Prep by LSAT Max
Weeks 1 and 2
You should concentrate on learning about LSAT abilities and question kinds for the first two weeks. As for the source material, it doesn’t really matter. It’s best to stick with what you’ve already bought. At the end of the day, every type of source material will more or less teach you the same things.
You should focus on being able to identify the different types of questions and develop a high-level approach to each question type.
You’ll have to fine-tune these methods anyhow once you begin taking the practice tests. So just read one or two books to get a good handle on logical reasoning, logic games, and reading comprehension.
During your first two weeks, you should be going through previous prep tests. It’s not essential to time yourself at this stage; all you need to remember is the different question types. This brings us to week 3.
Week 3:
Logical Reasoning
Do as many Main Conclusion, Role of Statement, Disagree, and Method of Reasoning questions as possible using old prep tests. When you examine these questions, make sure you can correctly identify background knowledge, premises, sub-conclusions, and major conclusions.
Logic Games
Complete a few easy sequence games every day, un-timed. You simply want to get acquainted with the question set-ups at this time. Finding answers to the logic games you’re tackling is critical. You may look for free resources on the internet or enroll in an LSAT course to get explanations.
Reading Comprehension
Complete 3 full sections of previous prep tests. Don’t worry about time at this point. If you’re having trouble (more than 10 incorrect), read several long-form articles each day to improve your comprehension and speed up your reading. If you’re having trouble finding the passage’s main point, start there. If you can identify the main idea but are still missing a lot of questions, go back through your reading comprehension guide and make improvements for each question type.
Week 4:
Logical Reasoning
When you’re confident in your ability to deconstruct arguments, move on to flaw and assumption questions. A week of study will suffice for flaw, necessary assumption, and sufficient assumption questions.
Logic Games
Stick with simple sequencing games, but start timing how quickly you can finish them. By the end of three months, you should be able to do simple sequencing games in 6.5 minutes or less, but for now, just try for 10 minutes. When your abilities become better, so will your speed.
Reading Comprehension
Continue with timed sections and longer-form reading if necessary. The majority of your time should be spent evaluating your work. You should go through each section until you understand the main point as well as why each correct answer choice is correct, and why the wrong answers are incorrect.
Week 5:
Logical Reasoning
You’re ready to advance to principle, strengthen, and weaken questions after a week of assumption questions. Spend the week studying these kinds of questions.
Logic Games
Seek out more sophisticated sequence games (usually not the initial game of a section), which will demand you to draw additional inferences.
Reading Comprehension
Keep doing timed sections and going over them meticulously.
Week 6:
Logical Reasoning
This is the week to polish your formal logic skills. You’ll go through a lot of inference questions (most strongly supported and must be true questions), as well as parallel reasoning and flawed parallel reasoning questions. There are several formal logic in these question types, so spend time learning about the many sorts of inferences that can be made from conditional chains and the principles of conditional statements.
Logic Games
Work on In and Out games this week to strengthen your formal logic skills. Learn how to create formal logic chains and conditional statements in writing.
Reading Comprehension
Review any previous practice sections that you have taken and continue to do so.
Week 7:
You may begin working through more recent exams (prep test 52-61).
Logical Reasoning
Do one or two full-timed logical reasoning sections each day. After you’ve finished the sections, spend at least twice as much time thoroughly studying each question as you did completing them.
Logic Games
This week, practice standard grouping games (three group games). Begin with simpler games and work your way up to more difficult ones.
Reading Comprehension
Practice timed sections from prep tests 52-61.
Week 8:
Logical Reasoning
Continue doing one or two timed logical reasoning sessions each day, and ensuring that you study thoroughly.
Logic Games
This week, play all of the basic group games (three group games). Begin with simpler games and then work your way up to more difficult ones.
Reading Comprehension
Continue with timed sections from prep tests 52-61.
Weeks 9 to 12:
You’re now equipped with a robust collection of LSAT abilities, and you’re ready to tackle full-timed practice exams. Ideally, each week, you should do 4-5 prep tests. Remember that you must also thoroughly study each test. Keep the most recent prep tests for the final two weeks before your LSAT, depending on how quickly you work.
